Wonder, Plan, Run, Reflect: Action Research in the Math Classroom – 12/15/20

Wonder, Plan, Run, Reflect: Action Research in the Math Classroom

Presenter: Theresa Hickey

Date: December 15, 2020

Being a responsive educator means getting to know your learners, leveraging their strengths, and tailoring your approaches so that the highest level of learning can take place. To do this, you need to try new things. But how will you know if your adjustments are making a difference?…. Action research! Join us for some great tips on designing and running this research in your own classroom!

Recommended Grade Level: K – 12+

Hosted by: Rana Hafiz

Watch the full presentation at: https://www.bigmarker.com/GlobalMathDept/Wonder-Plan-Run-Reflect-Action-Research-in-the-Math-Classroom

This Week at Global Math – 12/15/20







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Curated By Nate Goza @thegozaway

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Tonight!

Wonder, Plan, Run, Reflect: Action Research in the Math Classroom

Presented by Theresa Hickey

Being a responsive educator means getting to know your learners, leveraging their strengths, and tailoring your approaches so that the highest level of learning can take place. To do this, you need to try new things. But how will you know if your adjustments are making a difference?…. Action research! Join us for some great tips on designing and running this research in your own classroom!
 

To register for this webinar, click here.

Check out past and upcoming Global Math Department webinars. Click here for the archives or get the webinars in podcast form!

You can also visit our new YouTube Channel to find videos of past sessions and related content.

#GMDWrites

We Who Believe
By: Hema Khodai (@HKhodai)
 

Why do I write for the Global Math Department Newsletter? When I’m stuck in life and unsure of the next right thing I turn to the children, who never fail to lead the way even as they are continually failed by us.
 
Bean leads me daily and I marvel at the decisions she makes, the ways she engages with this world, and her resolve to be a part of the good this life has to offer. As I write this, she is leading me in a graduate-level seminar on writing (she knows I’m only half listening); selecting a font that captures her mood and sets the context for her story, authentically representing the essence of the characters and their lives, and illuminating the harsh and beautiful truths of the world we live in.
 
“Do you ever write to share information or convince others of an important idea?”, I ask.
Her response is precise, “I want my writing to reflect the person I am.” She continues generously, “My stories remind you that people who do bad things aren’t bad people. My characters and I, we’re not afraid to do things to help people.  The system is garbage sometimes. (It’s important for my writing to bring that to light.)”
 
So here I am, sharing with you a story that is true in mathematics councils and associations across the continent. I am tired of being the only. In this story, folx rigorously defend the superiority of mathematics over people while performing a charade of “wokeness”. I tell you the people “leading” the work have not done the work and have no interest in the work beyond maintaining their status and power as leaders in mathematics. They have not studied Black scholars nor invested time and energy into authentic relationships with racialized folx whose demands for humane experiences in the teaching and learning of mathematics are largely ignored. They merely apply thick layers of whiteness onto calls for liberation and abolition and parrot quotations from Dr. Dena Simmons that we can’t let SEL turn into “White Supremacy with a hug”. They continue to center the curriculum (standards in America) rooted in settler colonialism and anti-Blackness and promote resources (curriculum in America) that are not created by Indigenous, Black, and racialized (PoC in America) folx. These are not bad people. They just do incredibly bad things. 

The characters in this story, of whom I am one, are not afraid to name the mathematical processes of gatekeeping in mathematics education. Processes that stop short at representation and continue to silence voices that seek justice for entire generations and communities of children underserved and disempowered in mathematics classrooms. These are the folx who would argue with me about whether Rochelle Gutierrez is actually Dr. Gutiérrez rather than read her work to understand how mathematics education in its current form is dehumanizing. The ones who flinch at the suggestion of using the seminal works of a Black scholar.  Help me understand, an article from 2009 by a Black scholar is “outdated” but a mathematical trajectory from thirty years ago is “timeless”? I’m kidding, I don’t care to understand your racism.
 
Systems of mathematics education are garbage most times and especially so during a pandemic that mocks your repeated attempts at “academic integrity”, “abolition of streaming”, and all the other things that keep you from doing the real work of loving kids. But off you go to prepare your Slides, activities, and cool Bitmoji classrooms, the trappings of an ‘anti-racist’ mathematics education that hasn’t liberated you or the kids.
 
I’ll tell you this folx, I’ll be back in 2021 to continue this story of we who believe in freedom.
 

Lessons for the After Times
 
These last nine months have been…not normal. We’ve changed and adapted almost every aspect of our personal and professional lives and dealt with immeasurable loss and grief. At times, it seems like everything is awful (and truly, many things are awful).
 
But throughout these Corona Times, I’ve wondered: Are there things that we’re doing now that we can hold onto, even after the pandemic is over? Things that will serve us well in the After Times?
 
An obvious answer is that we’re learning to use technology to capture students’ thinking. I teach pre-service math teachers, and my students have been learning how to use all sorts of new technology in their student-teaching placements. They’re using video tools like SeeSaw and FlipGrid to capture students’ mathematical thinking. This has given them more thorough explanations than when students were working with just pencil and paper, especially for early elementary students who can say a lot more than they tend to write. They’re also planning interactive and exploratory lessons with PearDeck and Desmos, especially in secondary placements. Tools like these show us what students are thinking about during the lesson, and they give students multiple ways of engaging (even with their videos off). 
 
We’re turning to these technologies out of necessity — because it’s so much harder to know what students are thinking when we only see them in a little Zoom box. But even when we can see each other face-to-face, what insights into student thinking can tech tools offer? What new learning opportunities can we foster?
 
But even beyond the tech, I think (I hope?) we’re learning to cut each other (and ourselves!) some slack. Everyone is experiencing the pandemic differently — and struggling in different ways — but it’s been a hard year for everyone. As a result, I’ve noticed that, when assignments are missing or emails go unread, folks are starting to ask “What’s wrong? Is everything okay?” We’re checking in with empathy, instead of assuming that others are being negligent or lazy. Perhaps because we’re going through a collective trauma, we’re more likely to give others the benefit of the doubt. 
 
I hope that we can continue doing that, even when there’s not a global pandemic. Even in “normal” times, students and colleagues are dealing with death and loss, racism and other systems of oppression, food and housing insecurity, physical and mental health crises, and existential dread. What would the world look like if our default was to reach out with kindness and concern?
 
We’re also learning to connect in new ways — and to disconnect when we need to. Personally and professionally, we’ve been able to connect with folks from afar. We can join webinars and conferences without worrying about the cost or time of travel. We’ve been celebrating birthdays and graduations and weddings (and funerals) with loved ones that we don’t usually get to see. And the flip side of spending so much time online is that we have to disconnect, too. It’s become even more important than ever before to take breaks from the screen and to get some fresh air. 
 
Some of these have come out of sheer necessity — singing “Happy Birthday” on Zoom because it’s too dangerous to gather together or taking a tech break because we simply can’t bear to look at a screen for another moment. But what if we can continue having joyful moments with far-flung friends and family? What if we can maintain boundaries for our work-life balance?
 
Of course, none of this negates what we’ve been through, what we’re going through, or what is yet to come before the pandemic is over.
 
But I’m holding onto hope: Hope that we can let go of practices that weren’t really serving us in the Before Times. Hope that we will make it through these Corona Times. Hope that we can re-imagine and build a more humane After Times.

Written by Brette Garner (@brettegarner

Encountering Boundaries of Human and STEM: 
Some Wonderings as Told Through Six Panels

 
Two tweets caught my attention this week (images are linked): 

Inspired by these tweets and a few other thoughts I’ve been sitting with for a while, I wanted to process some wonderings through six panels.
 
Thanks for reading the GMD in 2020. See you next year.
 
@melvinmperalta

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This Week at Global Math – 12/8/20







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Curated By Nate Goza @thegozaway

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No Webinar this Week!

Next Tuesday 12/15

Wonder, Plan, Run, Reflect: Action Research in the Math Classroom

Presented by Theresa Hickey

Being a responsive educator means getting to know your learners, leveraging their strengths, and tailoring your approaches so that the highest level of learning can take place. To do this, you need to try new things. But how will you know if your adjustments are making a difference?…. Action research! Join us for some great tips on designing and running this research in your own classroom!
 

To register for this webinar, click here.

Check out past and upcoming Global Math Department webinars. Click here for the archives or get the webinars in podcast form!

You can also visit our new YouTube Channel to find videos of past sessions and related content.

#GMDWrites

Swimming in Water: Carceral Pedagogy in the Math Classroom 
 
By: Lauren Baucom and Sara Rezvi

Poetry has a way of cutting to truth, of separating waves from the shorelines all the while observing both simultaneously.  In his powerful poem, Guante notes that ‘white supremacy is not the shark, it is the water’. We swim in it, we are surrounded by it – these heady waters, this deep throbbing silence. Because of its constant presence, for many, it goes unnoticed, the water set as an unquestionable background. So, too, is the everpressing presence of carceral pedagogy in educational spaces. As writers of GMD, we refuse to participate in this silence. We mourn loudly. We bear witness deeply. We grieve. And we demand that these ideologies have no place within the mathematics classroom.
 
What is carceral pedagogy? How does it intersect with the mathematics classroom? What does it look, sound and feel like? Like the words of Guante, will we ever know it exists if we do not take time to recognize the waters in which we are constantly surrounded?
 
In a recent #Slowchat, Dr. Ilana Horn (@Ilana_horn) defined carcerality as “the physical domination and confinement of bodies in institutions, especially when they reinstate white supremacy.” Elsewhere, Dr. Bettina Love (@BLoveSoulPower), has discussed carcerality as systemic domination imposed by laws and enforced by incarceration. For the purpose of this piece, we define carceral pedagogy in the mathematics classroom to be the physical, mental, and social domination presented by the systems of white supremacy through laws, written and unwritten, that confine students’ bodies, minds, and spirits in the dehumanizing experiences  of their mathematics education. 
 
 In this moment of virtual teaching when teachers have a voyeuristic ability to track, watch, and mandate policies through their surveillance apparatus of choice (ClassDojo, Zoom, Google Meets, etc), we’ve experienced how EduTwitter has taken the purpose of education as a source of liberation and used this time and space to incarcerate students’ minds and bodies through a system of compliance and oppression. Children are subjected to the ever-present disciplinary gaze of the carceral teacher. Some examples include: (1) when they can’t visit the bathroom in their own homes, (2) being forced to turn on cameras to be counted as present, and (3) being told not to eat in class when their caregiver offers them a snack. We must name these efforts of carcerality as they have quickly seeped into this new world of online learning during a pandemic. Rather than offering grace, compassion, and boundless love, carceral teachers have led the charge in creating spaces that invade privacy and invalidate the need to attend to growing bodies.
 
Simultaneously, we must revisit the mathematics classroom space of face-to-face teaching to understand how carcerality has been used in the past to oppress the bodies and minds of students. 
 
In many classrooms, we have been sold the myth that students from low income areas require carceral style classroom pedagogy in order to succeed, and that without this type of oppression, they aren’t capable of doing the work. This kind of ideology is rooted in systems of white supremacy and dehumanization. We reject the narrative that the carceral teacher (who often is white) alone knows what is best for families and children of color. It is not the children that are lacking, but the carceral teacher. 
 
There has been much research to show how students of color, specifically Black girls, have been denied their right  to joyfully belong in math spaces. Using the ocrdata.ed.gov site, we can find countless examples of the literal barriers that imprison students to classes that are unworthy of their brilliance. How is it possible that in a district where almost 4 out of 10 of the students enrolled are Black, that less than half are allowed entry into Calculus classrooms? What unwritten laws govern the body language of students who appear “deep in mathematical thought” versus those who are “lazy, unproductive, and unmotivated”, physically barring them from mathematical spaces? We find it interesting that these narratives begin for students of color at young ages and continue onward into adolescence, almost as if these ideas are baked into our societal consciousness – as if we are all swimming in it.

Carceral pedagogy is often thought of to be discipline-based classroom practice, but it is also curricular. With the constant reminder from textbooks that mathematics was created in Europe by White males and no one else, the lack of representation confines students’ minds and social identities. Texts such as Francis Su’s (@mathyawp)  ‘Mathematics for Human Flourishing’ and Talithia Williams’ ‘Power in Numbers: The Rebel Women of Mathematics’ eloquently work to decenter this notion that mathematics has only ever been a Eurocentric endeavor rather than a Human one. Elsewhere, I (Sara) along with my co-authors, have argued that mathematics, just like literacy, needs to have its own set of windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors.  
 
Another example of carcerality that appears in the mathematics curriculum occurs when a teacher requires a particular method of solving, rather than being open to the expansive, liberatory solving process that mathematics encourages. 
 
Carceral classrooms are about control; when we try to control students’ thinking we create a low/no-trust environment with students that entraps their minds and eliminates the need for creativity, ingenuity, and authentic, original thought. 

How is it that this meme can be so readily found when we describe math classrooms? That this concept of illegality in alternative thinking is synonymous with math classrooms, rather than the liberatory experience we know mathematics to be?
 
In closing, we reflect on the immediacy and urgency of Arundathi Roy’s quote. The pandemic is a portal. How we swim through it or whether we drown in it, is up to us. Where it leads to is up to us. We engage deliberately in the practice of freedom dreaming, of imagining a world beyond the violence enacted upon children in mathematics classrooms. 
 
We are swimming in rough waters these days, full of murky sediment, glimpsing blearily into the unknown void. We have named here the silence, the complicity of holding onto dysfunctional systems that dehumanize children in the name of carcerality, of disciplinary productivity that seeks to mandate how we engage in mathematics (and beyond) as human beings.  We ask the reader to consider the following – If we are more aware of the water, is that enough? Is our awareness enough? Do we keep swimming? Or do we change the scope of our navigations?

The Global Math Department and researchers at North Carolina State University are undertaking a study to learn about teachers’ learning experiences from participation in the GMD. You can participate in this study if you have participated in the GMD as a presenter, attendee of a GMD conference, or reader of the GMD newsletter. 

We invite you to click the link to join the study as a participant and to learn more!

Get Involved with the Newsletter

Our team of writers and curators is committed to produce content that is reflective of our Statement of Solidarity and with the goal of moving these words into action.

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Bringing the Math Back: Lessons in Educational Recovery from Around the World – 12/1/20

Bringing the Math Back: Lessons in Educational Recovery from Around the World

Presenters: Brianna Kurtz

Date: December 1, 2020

We’ve been told repeatedly that we are teaching in unprecedented times, but in fact this is not the first round of education recovery post-natural disaster in modern times. We will look at lessons from around the world and how various nations reshaped their mathematics classrooms after interruptions due to disease, war, and weather-related phenomena. In these stories of resilience and innovation, we will imagine how our own classrooms may be reimagined in the wake of Covid-19.

Recommended Grade Level: 9 – 14

Hosted by: Amanda Riske

Watch the full presentation at: https://www.bigmarker.com/GlobalMathDept/Bringing-the-Math-Back-Lessons-in-Educational-Recovery-from-Around-the-World

 

This Week at Global Math – 12/1/20







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Curated By Chase Orton @mathgeek76

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Webinar Tonight! — December 1st, 2020

Bringing the Math Back: Lessons in Educational Recovery from Around the World

We’ve been told repeatedly that we are teaching in unprecedented times, but in fact this is not the first round of education recovery post-natural disaster in modern times. We will look at lessons from around the world and how various nations reshaped their mathematics classrooms after interruptions due to disease, war, and weather-related phenomena. In these stories of resilience and innovation, we will imagine how our own classrooms may be reimagined in the wake of Covid-19.

Presented by: Brianna Kurtz

To register for this webinar, click here.

Check out past and upcoming Global Math Department webinars. Click here for the archives or get the webinars in podcast form!

You can also visit our new YouTube Channel to find videos of past sessions and related content.

#GMDWrites

The Definition of Smart
 

I have been grappling with the idea of “smart” this year. Who do we consider “smart”? What fields of study do we consider the realm of “smart” people? (Mathematics is high on that list.) How are “smartness” and school success and fulfillment in life related?

I don’t have answers yet, but I came across a definition by Tressie McMillan Cottom (@tressiemcphd) that has shifted my thinking:
 

“Smart is only a construct of correspondence between one’s ability, one’s environment, and one’s moment in history. I am smart in the right way, in the right time, on the right end of globalization.”

 
I love Tressie’s definition and until something better comes along, this is the definition I’m working with. Mostly, I appreciate the recognition of “smart” being relational, as opposed to some kind of Platonic ideal. Smart as a construct of correspondence also fits nicely in the constellation of ideas that have been helping me grow as a math educator: (1) rehumanizing mathematics (Dr. Rochelle Gutierrez, @RG1gal); (2) unlearning deficit frameworks, particularly “current conceptions” (Dr. Maria Zavala @mdrzavala); and (3) redefining who is a math person (Howie Hua, @howie_hua).

Behind all of these ideas is the understanding that we are constructing mathematics, and we are constructing our measures of success (smartness). And therein lies our power: In accepting that these are things we make, we can decide to make something different. If we value different abilities (persistence over speed), and create different environments (collaboration over competition), we will produce different definitions of smart. The power is in knowing that our current definitions of both smart and mathematics are the result of decisions made by humans, and that we can make new decisions.
 
Two last things about this sentence: “I am smart in the right way, in the right time, on the right end of globalization.”

  1. I appreciate the humility in this definition. We could all use a bit of humility when thinking about our smarts.
  2. Acknowledging our moment in history feels like a call to action. How many “smart” people are we losing to the wrong side of all manner of structural violences?

Big, challenging questions, but I believe in our ability to figure them out together – we are a smart bunch.

by Idil Abdulkadir (@idil_a_)

Editor’s Note: Special thanks to Idil for being this week’s guest writer! Have an interest in writing for the Global Math Department Newsletter? Check out the invitation at the end of this Newsletter.
 

Focusing on the Positive

“It’s human nature to focus on the negative, but often a lot more is going right in your classroom than is going wrong.”

2020 has been a tough year to say the least, but good things are happening in 2020—we just might need a shift in perspective to help us see them. Simply learning how to look at a situation from a different point of view can change our negative interpretations to more positive ones.

With this in mind, I want to share this 2018 article by Patricia Jennings and MindShift (@MindShiftKQED) called “Changing How Educators See Negative Experiences in the Classroom.”

  

I invite you to give a read. And then take a look around you. What are some good things that are happening this year? How can we look at 2020 with a positive perspective?

by Amber Thienel (@amberthienel)

Thorn, Rose, Rosebuds
 

For this week’s entry in the Global Math Department newsletter, I’m keeping it simple by adhering to the “thorn, rose, rosebud” framework: one thing that’s no good; one thing that’s good and happened; and two things that are good and on the horizon.

Thorn 
Ellie Murray (below), Dave Kung (tweet) and others (e.g.) drew attention to a print ad from AT&T in the NYTimes. It is nice that the response to “thorny” ads like these is swift, but there were surely numerous points from brainstorming to publishing during which this could have been interrupted. I’m all for the call out, and/but: If you find yourself somewhere in the pipeline with the opportunity to disrupt before materials like these appear, be the one who speaks up!

Rose
As mentioned in a past newsletter, the Fields Institute planned and held its LGBTQ+ Math Day!


You can read more about the event in the AMS Inclusion/Exclusion blog post or on the event page (site hosted by Anthony Bonato). Relatedly, check out the sequence of tweets from Laurie Rubel here.
 
Rosebuds
Marian Dingle is giving a talk this Friday! It is entitled “Opening the Mathematical Gates: Moving Toward Inclusivity and Belonging,” and if past talks are any indication, it will most surely be worth your time. You can visit the talk page or find it in the tweet below (note the timing: Friday, December 4th, at 8PM EST):

Finally, the United States is at an exciting turning point such that a weaponized Department of Education, headed by unqualified republican megadonor / “shoot the grizzly bears” betsy devos, is transitioning to an incoming administration that will have a First Lady, Dr. Jill Biden, who holds a doctorate in education! The new administration has a “Join Us” website, and so I am personally urging YOU as a reader of the Global Math Department newsletter, if eligible to work in the United States, to consider submitting your CV/resume for consideration. A government, like any organization, is only as strong as its people; perhaps nothing will come from it, but I believe that an influx of applications by GMD readers would be a step in the right direction:

by Benjamin Dickman [@benjamindickman]

The Global Math Department and researchers at North Carolina State University are undertaking a study to learn about teachers’ learning experiences from participation in the GMD. You can participate in this study if you have participated in the GMD as a presenter, attendee of a GMD conference, or reader of the GMD newsletter. 

We invite you to click the link to join the study as a participant and to learn more!

Click Here to participate in this study

Get Involved with the Newsletter

Our team of writers and curators is committed to produce content that is reflective of our Statement of Solidarity and with the goal of moving these words into action.

With this in mind we are calling for new volunteers to expand our perspectives and raise our collective voices to move this publication forward. If you are interested in becoming a regular contributor or would like the opportunity to contribute as a guest writer, please fill out this form.

 

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